For the first couple hours of the drive it was just my roommate and me as we headed up to Brisbane to pick up the rest of our group. As with any tour, we started our drive with introductions. I gave the extended explanation of being from California but going to school in Maryland and eventually he just accepted that I was a child of the world. Then it was my roommate’s turn. She’s spent most of her time in the middle of the country, which to most Australians (and most Americans, to be fair) must just look like a jumble of nameless states. So first she explained that she went to the University of Kentucky, but got minimal response. Then she went on to explain that she grew up in Kansas at which point he exclaimed “like Dorothy!” Precisely.
Eventually we picked up the other three members of our trip, made introductions again (at which point we discovered that most foreigners also believe Texas and Kansas are synonymous) and continued on to Fraser Island. I’d imagine it was a beautiful drive though we all slept for most of it, each person finding their own unique way to sleep while sitting knee to knee and surrounded by coolers and luggage. Eventually I woke up to the feeling of careening down a hill. I was sitting sideways behind the driver’s seat and peaked over Russ’s shoulder to see the speedometer hit 120. Kilometers per hour, that is. I did some quick math and discovered that was actually only about 75 mph, but for whatever reason it felt like we were flying.
We all gradually returned to consciousness, opened the windows and enjoyed the drive as Sweet Home Alabama and Born in the USA crackled in and out over the radio (yes, no joke, they really play those songs here). It was the perfect soundtrack to our road trip as endless greenery and lily pad ponds whizzed by the windows.
As we headed north we drove through small towns and valleys that had been extremely hard hit by the Queensland floods. We drove over one bridge (with nothing but green fields several meters below it) that Russell said had been completely covered during the floods. He told us a story of just making it over the bridge before the floodwaters rose; another company’s truck full of passengers that were just a few hours behind him ended up stranded and unable to return to Brisbane for four days.
We stopped a few times along the way for bathroom breaks and food before arriving at Rainbow Beach around 11 (over five hours after we’d departed Bond) where Russell let air out of the tires in preparation for our off-roading 4 wheel-drive weekend on the island. From there we drove to a completely secluded beach where we got out and walked through 6 inches of sucking mud (sans shoes) to the water’s edge. It was the clearest ocean I’d ever seen and the area all around us was spectacular. The blue sky was full of puffy white clouds that came down to meet green land and white sand beaches. I looked to our German-speaking companion and spoke in a language we could both understand. “This. Is. Paradise.”
After reveling at how clear the water was, we got back in the truck and boarded the ferry to Fraser Island. It was a short boat ride before we were again pulling up to another beautiful beach and headed out on our adventure. As we went flying down the beach one of the first things we came across was a wild dingo chilling alongside a spring water creek that bubbled out of the island and flowed right down to the ocean. When I say we stumbled upon a dingo what I really mean is that as we were flying at 80 kph down the beach, there it was just chilling in the middle of the “road.” Yes, in Fraser Island the beach serves as a freeway complete with speed limits, rules of the road and police officers toting speed guns. It was quite a unique experience.
Once we’d gotten over our dingo excitement we continued on down the beach, slowing just enough to keep the creek water from splashing high enough to come in the windows. After about 40 minutes of driving along the beach we arrived at our “beach resort.” It was too early for us to actually get into our rooms, but we sat in one of the gazebos to eat lunch. I made two important discoveries during our brief lunch stop. The first one was Sweet Chili Sauce aka the greatest sandwich addition ever. I stumbled upon it largely by accident as I was putting together my ham sandwich and I’m pretty sure I’ll be bringing back approximately 82 bottles with me. If you ask nicely, I just may share.
My second discovery was far less wonderful. Marsh flies. Literally the most disgusting bugs you can imagine. They’re big. They’re hideous. They’re relentless. And they loved me. They followed us around from lunch on our first day until we had left the island. But more on them later.
After lunch we drove out to a trailhead just across the “freeway” from the ocean’s edge. We hiked a little over 2 km through a tropical forest as Russ nonchalantly pointed out different birds and snakes and had us all stay close together at one point when he thought he heard a dingo hunting us from through the thicket of trees. Eventually we made our way out to a huge valley of sand that had been completely hidden on three sides by the forest and by the ocean on the other. We hiked through the sand to a secluded lake that was also surrounded by forests and endless sand. It almost looked like a mirage simmering over the sand with glistening water that reflected the green of the bottom of the lake. As soon as we spotted the lake we took off running (or as close to running as we could muster in the heat and sand), hoping that once we hit the water the marsh flies that had been attacking us throughout the hike would leave.
The lake felt wonderful. The water was the perfect combination of refreshing, but not too cool and you could see all the way down to the bottom (this wasn’t always reassuring as they were tons of fish swimming around, which I would’ve been perfectly happy not to see).
After relaxing in the water, watching Russ feed the catfish and getting dive-bombed by marsh flies, we hiked back to the truck. As we drove back to the “beach resort,” the marsh flies flew alongside the truck, easily traveling at 30 kph and completely freaking us out. To make our bug issues even better we came to discover that, in France, the word “cockroach” is taught to reference any kind of bug. How did we learn this? Funny you should ask.
As we were riding back, I was sitting next to our French travel companion, Tiphanie, who felt the need to point a bug out to me that was crawling on the side of the truck behind my head. Only by the time I looked to see what she was talking about, all signs of the bug were gone because it had supposedly fallen somewhere down by my feet. The word she knew for bug was “cockroach,” and by the time she finished saying that I had thrown off my seatbelt and literally leapt across the truck. Turns out it wasn’t actually a cockroach, but some smaller bug that we never actually saw again.
Finally we made it back to our hotel for the night and got checked into our rooms fairly easily. The process of actually getting into our rooms, however, was far more difficult. As we walked over to the backpackers portion of the “resort” we were again swarmed by marsh flies that left us running, jumping and shrieking to our rooms. Only the trouble didn’t end once we got to our rooms since the doors were outside and also swarming with marsh flies.
The actual process of getting into our room went something like this. We would both huddle together pressed up against the door, one of us with the key in the door and the other swatting flies and protecting the key holder. After double and triple checking that we were each ready to make a quick break into the room, we’d swing the door open just enough to squeeze through and then slam it as soon as we were both in the room. From there, we’d examine the room to make sure no rogue flies had gotten in with us and then we’d collapse onto the beds waiting for our hearts to stop racing.
After getting acquainted with our room and taking a swim we headed to dinner, a delicious Mexican buffet (although at that point anything would’ve tasted divine). It rained while we ate so by the time we headed back outside the bugs and the heat had died down a bit. We grabbed sweatshirts and headed down to the beach to check out the stars. It was at this point that I realized I’d never full understood what people meant when they said that city lights make it hard to see the stars. At home you can always look up and see them twinkling away, but that was nothing compared to what we could see from the beach.
It was completely pitch black around us to the point that you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face and as we looked up we could actually SEE THE MILKY WAY! It almost looked like a path through the sky littered with stars and it was too cool! Russ pointed out the Southern Cross to us (which I’d obviously never seen before!) and we sat on the beach for quite awhile watching stars shoot through the sky.
It was only 9 p.m. at this point, but we were wiped out so we headed back to our room for bed. But here came the real debate. How to avoid inhaling/ingesting/being attacked by bugs as we slept. The way our room was arranged there were two sets of bunk beds so we each had the option of sleeping on the top or the bottom. After much debate as to which position was less likely to get bugified, we each settled on the bottom bunks, hoping that the mattress above our heads would act as a shield of sorts. We then decided to sleep with the lights on recognizing that while bugs would be attracted to the lights, at least if we woke up in the middle of the night to the sensation of something crawling around, we’d quickly be able to determine exactly what it was and respond accordingly. Our final step in protecting ourselves from the bugs was to sleep with spare shirts over our faces. Yes, this proved to be incredibly hot since we had no air conditioning, but it was a necessary evil.
We ended up getting minimal sleep because of the heat and fear of bugs, but eventually we made it through the night bug-free and lived to see our second day on the island.
